Gandhi said the party will defeat the saffron party and Narendra Modi in Gujarat just the way it was defeated in Ayodhya.
Modi can abandon the path of Hindutva only at risk to his position within his own fraternity. But if he pursues a hard line, he faces the risk of being hauled up by his coalition-partners. For the first time in a decade, Modi is not in enviable situation, observes Nilanjan Mukhopadhyay.
An e-mail, purportedly sent by the Indian Mujahideen, has threatened to kill senior Bharatiya Janata Party leader L K Advani during his visit to Shillong on September 29.
Politely decline to be prime minister, and hand the baton to someone else in the BJP -- like Sonia did to Manmohan Singh -- advises Krishna Prasad.
Occasional lovers' tiffs have marked the history of RSS-BJP relations. To think that Nagpur will bring about any change in leadership is a misreading of both its intent and its power, points out Shekhar Gupta.
If Indira Gandhi hadn't targeted the RSS, Narendra Modi wouldn't be sitting pretty with his second majority and looking at a third, asserts Shekhar Gupta.
Some have been cherry-picked to assert the BJP's supremacy over its allies or, significantly, its leaders who charted an independent course in the recent past.
The coming weeks are sure to have a lot of drama unfolding in Maharashtra, predicts N Sathiya Moorthy.
The last Bharat Ratna award was conferred upon Pranab Mukherjee in 2019 and was posthumously awarded to Bhupendra Kumar Hazarika and Nanaji Deshmukh. The award was not given to anyone between 2020 and 2023.
Alok Kumar said that all the required medical facilities and other arrangements will be provided to Advani during his visit to the Pran Pratistha ceremony in Ayodhya.
'The BJP is using administrative machinery to fight elections'
Advani and Dr Joshi might not attend the consecration ceremony due to health and age-related reasons. Advani is 96 and Dr Joshi will turn 90 next month.
Destiny had decided that a grand temple of Lord Ram will be built in Ayodhya and it chose Prime Minister Narendra Modi for this, BJP stalwart L K Advani has said in an article to be published in a special edition of the Rashtra Dharma magazine next week.
The government had earlier announced the country's highest civilian honour for L K Advani and Karpoori Thakur.
The satta market is accepting bets on how many times Modiji will mention Nehru at his election rallies, says A Ganesh Nadar with a wink.
President Droupadi Murmu on Saturday conferred Bharat Ratna, the country's highest civilian honour, on former prime ministers P V Narasimha Rao and Chaudhary Charan Singh, agriculture scientist M S Swaminathan and two-time former Bihar chief minister Karpoori Thakur, posthumously at a ceremony held at the Rashtrapati Bhavan in New Delhi.
Surrounded by party workers, including 32 of Nationalist Congress Party's 53 MLAs, Maharashtra deputy chief minister Ajit Pawar on Wednesday reminded his 83-year-old uncle Sharad Pawar that it was time for him to retire.
The resolution, moved by Chief Minister Bhupendra Patel, was passed unanimously as besides the BJP MLAs, members of the Opposition Congress as well as the Aam Aadmi Party extended their support to it.
The BJP's top leadership will drop its MPs found to be facing anti-incumbency, according to its internal surveys -- a pivotal tactic to ensure the party achieves its target of winning 370 seats.
The BJP will enter this election, as it does every election, as if it is fighting to prevent a 2004-style defeat. This is a party that wins big because it always behaves as if its back is to the wall, predicts Mihir S Sharma.
'Are we so ready to believe that in this country whose virtues we constantly shout from the rooftops, there is no single person -- other than Modi -- in a minimum of 272 elected MPs with the talent and ability to lead this country?' asks Prem Panicker.
Veteran Bharatiya Janata Party leader L K Advani has said the Ram Janmbhoomi movement, whose primary objective was construction of the Ram temple in Ayodhya, also became a symbol of 'reclaiming the true meaning of secularism from the onslaught of pseudo-secularism'.
While about 8,000 people are in the long list of invitees, the select list features 506 A-listers, including prominent politicians, leading industrialists, top film stars, sportspersons, diplomats, judges and high priests.
Thakur's tenure as chief minister is best remembered for implementation of the recommendations of the Mungeri Lal Commission, whereby quotas for backward classes were introduced in the state in 1978. This panel was the forerunner of the Mandal Commission. Both Mungeri Lal and B P Mandal were from Bihar, which has a long history of socialist struggles.
In the 76 years since India gained independence, 53 recipients of the Bharat Ratna have been there. That's less than one every year, which is a healthy ratio given there is the sanctity of this gem of an award to preserve. But four recipients for the year were announced in a few days in addition to one announced earlier. That took the total number in 2024 to five in less than a month, the highest for any year, post-Independence, notes Shyam G Menon.
'What should surprise BJP supporters is Modi's call for 'stability' at the manifesto launch, a theme that he and his team members had not touched ahead of the Lok Sabha polls in 2014 and 2019.' 'The last time the party called for 'stability at the Centre' was in 1998 and 1999,' recalls N Sathiya Moorthy.
Mani Shankar Aiyar says the Congress party and not then prime minister Rajiv Gandhi was responsible for unlocking the Babri Masjid gates and claimed that the "Bharatiya Janata Party-planted" Arun Nehru was behind it.
Deriving from Narendra Modi's continuing charisma, the proposed scheme, if and when implemented, can cut both ways. That is to say, if Modi can win, he can lose. Or, someone else in his place, later on, could lose as much as he could win in his time, points out N Sathiya Moorthy.
Why did Modi single out the Congress and its leaders for the most pugnacious verbal assault while sparing other regional adversaries? If he is trying to get some parties to break the Opposition ranks, it means that the BJP's present bravado is for effect. Nilanjan Mukhopadhyay, author of Narendra Modi: The Man, The Times, begins a new column for Rediff.com.
The BJP could ask at least a dozen of its 92 Rajya Sabha MPs, particularly those who have served more than one term, to contest the 2024 Lok Sabha polls.
Modi believes that the Congress leadership does not have the political sagacity to undertake a course correction because of its preoccupation about not losing its current gains in the voter base, observes Shekhar Iyer.
Will BJP campaigners start using the term 'Ram Rajya' to refer to the nation under Modi's rule, asks N Sathiya Moorthy.
Chef par excellence Satish Arora recalls his days working as a chef to prime ministers to Chandrima Pal.
'We are very close to become a theocratic State where Hinduism is the official religion of the government.'
Modi wants the BJP to gets an additional 10% of the vote share from what it won in 2019. Plans are afoot to get new faces to replace MPs with poor chances of winning. Sources say more than 100 MPs are like to be axed, notes Modi biographer Ramesh Menon.
Most politicians and even non-politicians have been honoured because of what they were purported to be electorally worth for the ruling party of their time, argues N Sathiya Moorthy.
The coming assembly and Lok Sabha elections -- the choice of candidates, the campaign strategies and the negotiations with other Opposition parties --0 represent the real test for Mallikarjun Kharge.
What should be made out of the Madras high court order involving non-Hindus' entry into Hindu temples, when many non-Hindus are among the hundreds of thousands that have been worshipping at these temples for generations, asks N Sathiya Moorthy.
'Bihar, Maharashtra, Karnataka, Bengal can be the game changers of 2024.'
What the INDIA alliance needs is neither a counter to Modi's tall personality and undiminished charisma nor a counter-narrative to his Hindutva agenda, now centred on the Ayodhya temple consecration on January 22, argues N Sathiya Moorthy.
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